What threats to media freedom?

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

By
Jeanette Minns

2/19/15, 3:40 AM CET

Updated 2/24/15, 10:00 AM CET

After meeting Aleksandar Vučic, Serbia’s prime minister, on Monday, Johannes Hahn, the European commissioner for the neighbourhood and enlargement negotiations, was asked about threats in Serbia to media freedom.

He responded: “I have heard this several times and I am asking always about proof. I am willing to follow up such reproaches, but I need evidence and not only rumours.”

Could it be that Hahn has not read the European Commission’s report on Serbia in 2014 which said that “there are concerns about deteriorating conditions for the full exercise of freedom of expression”, warned that “a continued lack of transparency over media ownership and sources of media advertising and funding was accompanied by a tendency to self-censorship in the media”, and argued that “the authorities have an important responsibility…including by reacting to and publicly condemning threats, physical assaults and cases of incitement to violence and hate speech from extremist groups against civil society organisations, human rights defenders, journalists and bloggers”?

Is Hahn distancing himself from that reproachful report? Or is he so bruised by accusations from Vučic last month that the EU is funding media outlets to criticise him and his government that he is now exhibiting a tendency to self-censorship?

There is something splendidly parochial about the state-aid investigation launched last week by the European Commission’s competition department into JC Decaux, a French advertising company. The question …